The Transition Years

134:1.1Af­ter tak­ing leave of Gonod and Ga­nid at Charax (in De­cem­ber of A.D. 23), Je­sus re­turned by way of Ur to Baby­lon, where he joined a desert car­a­van that was on its way to Da­mas­cus. From Da­mas­cus he went to Naz­a­reth, stop­ping only a few hours at Ca­per­naum, where he paused to call on Zeb­e­dee’s fam­ily. There he met his brother James, who had some­time pre­vi­ously come over to work in his place in Zeb­e­dee’s boat­shop. Af­ter talk­ing with James and Jude (who also chanced to be in Ca­per­naum) and af­ter turn­ing over to his brother James the lit­tle house which John Zeb­e­dee had man­aged to buy, Je­sus went on to Naz­a­reth.

134:1.2At the end of his Med­i­ter­ra­nean jour­ney Je­sus had re­ceived suf­fi­cient money to meet his liv­ing ex­penses al­most up to the time of the be­gin­ning of his pub­lic min­istry. But aside from Zeb­e­dee of Ca­per­naum and the peo­ple whom he met on this ex­traor­di­nary trip, the world never knew that he made this jour­ney. His fam­ily al­ways be­lieved that he spent this time in study at Alexan­dria. Je­sus never con­firmed these be­liefs, nei­ther did he make open de­nial of such mis­un­der­stand­ings.

134:1.3Dur­ing his stay of a few weeks at Naz­a­reth, Je­sus vis­ited with his fam­ily and friends, spent some time at the re­pair shop with his brother Joseph, but de­voted most of his at­ten­tion to Mary and Ruth. Ruth was then nearly fif­teen years old, and this was Je­sus’ first op­por­tu­nity to have long talks with her since she had be­come a young woman.

134:1.4Both Si­mon and Jude had for some time wanted to get mar­ried, but they had dis­liked to do this with­out Je­sus’ con­sent; ac­cord­ingly they had post­poned these events, hop­ing for their el­dest brother’s re­turn. Though they all re­garded James as the head of the fam­ily in most mat­ters, when it came to get­ting mar­ried, they wanted the bless­ing of Je­sus. So Si­mon and Jude were mar­ried at a dou­ble wed­ding in early March of this year, A.D. 24. All the older chil­dren were now mar­ried; only Ruth, the young­est, re­mained at home with Mary.

134:1.5Je­sus vis­ited with the in­di­vid­ual mem­bers of his fam­ily quite nor­mally and nat­u­rally, but when they were all to­gether, he had so lit­tle to say that they re­marked about it among them­selves. Mary es­pe­cially was dis­con­certed by this un­usu­ally pe­cu­liar be­hav­ior of her first-born son.

134:1.6About the time Je­sus was prepar­ing to leave Naz­a­reth, the con­duc­tor of a large car­a­van which was pass­ing through the city was taken vi­o­lently ill, and Je­sus, be­ing a lin­guist, vol­un­teered to take his place. Since this trip would ne­ces­si­tate his ab­sence for a year, and inas­much as all his broth­ers were mar­ried and his mother was liv­ing at home with Ruth, Je­sus called a fam­ily con­fer­ence at which he pro­posed that his mother and Ruth go to Ca­per­naum to live in the home which he had so re­cently given to James. Ac­cord­ingly, a few days af­ter Je­sus left with the car­a­van, Mary and Ruth moved to Ca­per­naum, where they lived for the rest of Mary’s life in the home that Je­sus had pro­vided. Joseph and his fam­ily moved into the old Naz­a­reth home.

134:1.7This was one of the more un­usual years in the in­ner ex­pe­ri­ence of the Son of Man; great prog­ress was made in ef­fect­ing work­ing har­mony be­tween his hu­man mind and the in­dwelling Ad­juster. The Ad­juster had been ac­tively en­gaged in re­or­ga­niz­ing the think­ing and in re­hears­ing the mind for the great events which were in the not then dis­tant fu­ture. The per­son­al­ity of Je­sus was prepar­ing for his great change in at­ti­tude to­ward the world. These were the in-be­tween times, the tran­si­tion stage of that be­ing who be­gan life as God ap­pear­ing as man, and who was now mak­ing ready to com­plete his earth ca­reer as man ap­pear­ing as God.